About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

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The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

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Wednesday, 14 December 2011

National's High Tide

This Far - But No Further: In spite of his best efforts, John Key could not lift National's vote above 48 percent. Like Rob Muldoon and Jim Bolger before him, it was a matter of "close, but no cigar". Clearly, Stephen Joyce's dream of winning more than 50 percent of the Party Vote must remain just that - a dream. National's tide is at the full: it can only recede.

THE RULE BOOK is safe. The experts told us that, under a system of proportional representation, it is next-to-impossible for a single party to win more that 50 percent of the popular vote in a multi-party election. And so it has proved. Indeed, John Key’s election-night boast that National had achieved its best result since 1951 proved to be somewhat premature. In terms of the popular vote, both Rob Muldoon and Jim Bolger did better than Mr Key, taking 47.6 percent And 47.8 percent respectively.

Nevertheless, 47.3 percent of the Party Vote is an impressive feat – and fully two percentage points higher than the MMP record established by Mr Key’s party only three years ago. In failing to breach that historical limit of 48 percent, however, Mr Key has laid to rest the cherished hope of many in the National Party that a genuine majority lies within their grasp. And, with the emphatic victory of MMP in the referendum, it must now be generally accepted that the tide of National support can rise no higher.

This leaves National’s strategists facing a rather large conundrum. Having swallowed-up all of their right-wing electoral rivals – and still fallen short of their 50 percent + 1 target – in which direction should they now turn? Further to the Right? Or double-back and turn towards the Left?

Prior to the election there were many in National’s ranks quietly praying that most of the four percent of the Party Vote claimed by NZ First in 2008 would end up flowing National’s way. Their shock and anger on election-night is easily imagined.

Unlike the Alliance, Winston Peters’ party did not fracture, and then fracture again into electoral irrelevance. Far from it. NZ First not only held, it grew. The notorious “tea-pot tape” observations of Messrs Key and Banks notwithstanding, Mr Peters support extends far beyond the elderly. As anyone who witnessed the launch of his campaign at Alexandra Park will testify, his base now spans the entire New Zealand population – including, perhaps surprisingly, immigrants from East and South Asia.

That just leaves Colin Craig’s Conservative Party. Absorbing the latter’s two percent of the Party Vote would, however, come at a cost. National would have to step back into the fetid ideological swamp of the Religious Right: that place where Don Brash came to such grief in the 2005 General Election; that place from which Mr Key extracted National’s electability by throwing his party’s support behind the anti-smacking bill in 2007.

Any embrace of the Religious Right would provoke a mass exodus of National’s more liberal supporters. The party might inherit the nearly 60,000 electors who voted Conservative, but it would likely lose twice that number to Labour and the Greens.

If moving further to the Right offers National few, if any, advantages; what about a move to the Left? Much of Mr Key’s first term success is attributable to his decision to bring the Maori Party into his government. Like his very public repudiation of the Religious Right, the National Leaders embrace of the Maori Party silenced the howling dogs of Orewa who, like their evangelical brethren, posed a deadly threat to National’s carefully constructed image of moderation.

But while the embrace of the Maori Party has brought only good to National, to the Maori Party itself it has brought only division and decline. Though the loyalty of its three remaining MPs may be shored up with the perquisites of ministerial office, the party will almost certainly expire as a viable electoral force before the 2014 election.

Which leaves only the Greens as a potential National Party running mate in elections to come. But is this, the ultimate fantasy of the Right’s urban liberals, a practical proposition? Or, would it lead to the fracturing of both parties’ electoral bases?

Reaching out to the Greens would induce both rage and panic among National’s rural and provincial supporters. The offer of anything more substantial than an anodyne “Memorandum of Understanding” would immediately set off wild drumming in the heartland for the establishment of a “Country Party”. In the deep blue suburbs of metropolitan New Zealand such an unthinkable misalliance would pump lungfuls of desperately needed oxygen into the barely breathing body of the Act Party. And with Winston Peters hastening to set up refugee camps in NZ First, National would be faced with imminent disintegration.

And always, over National’s shoulder looms the spectre of New Zealand’s second largest party. No, not Labour, but the party of the one million Kiwis who chose not to vote at all in 2011. It is among these voters that the missionaries of the opposition parties will be moving ceaselessly for the next three years: cajoling them; flattering them; and wooing them back to the ballot-box.

How many of them, I wonder, are National voters?

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 13 December 2011.

7 comments:

The one variable that is not considered here is what a higher turnout would have meant for the percentages. It is assumed that the low turnout hurt Labour; but there is also anecdotal evidence to suggest that may have also cost National. It might be interesting to conjecture about conservative politics after Banks, Dunne and Peters have finally departed.

But what seems reasonably clear is that the electorate seat results are likely to ossify, unless the MMP system is changed. In the general seats, the National Party significantly increased their majorities to the point where it is difficult to see any incumbents being beaten in the next two elections. Certainly, it will difficult for Labour to win back any provincial seats, so it will still be mostly competing with the Greens for the party vote. Nothing from the recent leadership change indicates a move to consolidate its support among the urban poor, and even if it takes back the Maori seats the disenfranchisement of poor and urban Maori looks to continue. So overall National is still in the box seat.

Straight to a detail, Key made it ok for the middle class to vote tory AND keep their in work tax credits, aka “communisim by stealth”-J.Key NZ Parliament. WFF enables a number of working but ‘only just keeping it together’ families to continue.

WFF is also an obstacle to increasing union density. Why organise and get wage rises from employers when other tax payers top you up. If there are undeserving beneficiaries in this country, prime candidates are the middle classes. I support most reforms (state housing and schooling etc) on a case by case basis, but the cost to the left of WFF is too high under a Labour or tory led govt.

I've been watching the political events of the year and trying to make sense of it all. While National is certainly at high tide, I'm not so sure Labour is at low tide. Labour is in long-term trouble and Shearer/Robertson is a symptom of that. A party that no longer understands its own brand. Shearer waffles too much to ever rate highly with the public and Robertson being gay will fuel the movement of socially conservative centrist voters to NZ First. Perhaps Labour will lead a government in 2014, but watch for the continued rise of the Greens on the liberal-left and NZ First on the authoritarian-centre-left with Labour squeezed and increasingly brandless unlikely to increase their vote over 2011.

"The experts told us that, under a system of proportional representation, it is next-to-impossible for a single party to win more that 50 percent of the popular vote in a multi-party election. And so it has proved."

I'm not so sure about that, Chris.

I think the Nats actually did win a majority, if in a roundabout way.

John Banks and Peter Dunne are, nominally, members of other political parties. But the reality is that neither would be in Parliament without (in)direct intervention from the National Party Politburo. National's tutelage of Banks and Dunne indicates that both men are de factor National MPs.

Goldsmith and Shanks effectively gave National TWO candidates in each Electorate.

Without National's support neither Banks nor Dunne would have succeeded/ This makes them a part of the National apparatus, and ipso facto, the Nats crossed that magical 50+1 threshold.

Of course, practically every one of us knew what was going on in Epsom and Ohariu. We just played along with the charade.

From National's point of view it was a "damned close run thing". Peter Dunne won Ohariu over Charles Chauvel by 1392 votes, while the Green candidate, Gareth Hughes, took 2160 votes.

Maybe every single Green supporter who possibly could bear to do it voted for Chauvel. But I'm not aware of any encouragement to Greens to support Chauvel. We have to ask why the Greens didn't do this.

Because the reality is, if 1400 of the votes for Hughes had gone the way of Chauvel, then those "partial" state owned asset sales would be down the gurgler.

Yes the Nats can rely on the Maori Party on other policy areas but not on this one. The headline policy would have been dead in the water. For the want of 1400 votes...

Did the Greens fear to look too "cosy" with Labour again? Did it not fit with the "sensible Greens" strategy?

Or did everyone in the Greens just swallow the widely promoted expectation of the Nats gaining 50%+ and not even think of alternative scenarios?

Either way, it is an appalling misjudgement.

(Before anyone asks, I checked the numbers on the Electoral Commission calculator and there would be no other redistribution of seats if Dunne disappeared - Labour would keep the extra seat and Nat/Banks would not hold a majority.)